Ditched 9x in favour of Win2k - any way to make it look like Windows 9x/ME?

[Paul92]

Hi all

 

Was given an old P4 HT Desktop, 512mb ram, with no HD, so had to put in my own. 

I decided to set up a machine for vintage games, and installed Win98se.

One would have expected given the specs of the machine, Windows 98se to run smoothly with no freezing, or hangups. However I was severely unimpressed by the performance, and countless System is busy blue screens, so I decided to give Windows ME a try (Yes I know, however I thought given how powerful my hardware would be for a machine of that era, I would be able to get by without crashes or anything), and I have read that a stable ME system outperforms Windows 98se. I did notice a huge improvement in performance, however in typical ME fashion my PC would blue screen without warning, one it even blue screened when I was trying to shut down the machine. System is busy errors were also frequent. 

I then decided to ditch Win9x all together in favour of Windows 2000, and I must say performance is rock solid, I haven't had any system crashes yet, and I have left the desktop on for 3 days now. Games work well, It's just a pity having to ditch Win9x for the sake of stability. If I had my way, I would have preferred to have stayed with 98, or ME. 

Which lead me to wonder is there not a way to load the Windows 98/me shell, load the Windows ME/98 splash screen, and replace all the photos, and logos in reference to Windows 2000, like for example the Windows 2000 Professional logo when one calls up the start menu, to those that were shipped with Windows 9x. The result is basically the Windows 9x user shell, and references, but the backbone is the far superior Windows 2000 NT based system, which will lead to less crashes. If something like this existed, or if it were possible to make something like this, it will be a dream come true. Windows 9x with no blue screens or crashes. 

Thanks in advance. 

[Nokiamies]

1 hour ago, Paul92 said:

Hi all

 

Was given an old P4 HT Desktop, 512mb ram, with no HD, so had to put in my own. 

I decided to set up a machine for vintage games, and installed Win98se.

One would have expected given the specs of the machine, Windows 98se to run smoothly with no freezing, or hangups. However I was severely unimpressed by the performance, and countless System is busy blue screens, so I decided to give Windows ME a try (Yes I know, however I thought given how powerful my hardware would be for a machine of that era, I would be able to get by without crashes or anything), and I have read that a stable ME system outperforms Windows 98se. I did notice a huge improvement in performance, however in typical ME fashion my PC would blue screen without warning, one it even blue screened when I was trying to shut down the machine. System is busy errors were also frequent. 
 

Pentium 4 478 socket or 775 socket? Also what mainboard, cpu, gpu, sound card and which driver version you tried? Also was it windows 98 or windows 98SE

1 hour ago, Paul92 said:

 Windows 9x with no blue screens or crashes.

that is possible too on 9x if configured proper. It takes time configure. Before I had lot of crashes on my Pentium 3 system but after using known stable drivers, installing few updates, making sure hdd is ok all worked fine

1 hour ago, Paul92 said:

Which lead me to wonder is there not a way to load the Windows 98/me shell, load the Windows ME/98 splash screen, and replace all the photos, and logos in reference to Windows 2000, like for example the Windows 2000 Professional logo when one calls up the start menu, to those that were shipped with Windows 9x. The result is basically the Windows 9x user shell, and references, but the backbone is the far superior Windows 2000 NT based system, which will lead to less crashes. If something like this existed, or if it were possible to make something like this, it will be a dream come true. Windows 9x with no blue screens or crashes. 

Thanks in advance. 

NTOSKRNL.EXE  contains boot screen of windows 2000 on bitmap format. Modifying it is no easy task. It is not like on windows 98. But possible. One tool that may do the trick is tuneup utils bootscreen tool. I used it back in day to change bootscreens on windows. Windows 2000 logo on start menu is on shell32.dll and not sure how swap it.

 

Anything I said from modifying is high risk and may result system to be unbootable. First fully update win2000 before trying since patches will break stuff if doing bigger mods.

[Nokiamies]

Also I think this belongs to Windows 2000/2003/NT4 section and should be moved there by moderators since topic is aboutwindows 2000

Edited April 27, 2021 by Mr.Scienceman2000